


Feels like coming home

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Soft and Fluffy, also baby dragons, and a first kiss, because that, what's the word for when you distance yourself from your body?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 03:35:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14991866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Once Credence works out the whole obscurial thing, life is better. So much better. He slips between corporeal and not, spiralling out into black smoke like joy and freedom and dripping reluctantly back into legs and hands like coming home to a cage.If it wasn’t for Newt, he doubts he’d bother with his human form.





	Feels like coming home

Once Credence works out the whole obscurial thing, life is better. So much better. He slips between corporeal and not, spiralling out into black smoke like joy and freedom and dripping reluctantly back into legs and hands like crawling down to a cage.

If it wasn’t for Newt, he doubts he’d bother with his human form. It’s both too small and too large. It’s awkward. It gets hurt by the tiniest things, and it’s demandingly needy - hungry, sore, tired, achy, why doesn’t it just  _shut up_. So Credence just… stops listening. He used to do it, before, but it’s so much easier now that he has the obscurus form. So much better.

“Credence, you’re bleeding!”

Credence blinks and glances down at himself. He can’t see - oh, his arm. There’s three scratches across his forearm, deep ones, the longest of which snakes to the crook of his elbow. The blood forms rivulets of red down to his hand, and Credence is distracted enough that he doesn’t notice Newt reaching for his arm in time to stop him.

“Where did you - here, let me,” Newt babbles, peeling back the edges of Credence’s shirt with excruciating care.

“Here,” Credence says, tugging his shirt over the wounds in one swift movement. “It doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t - Credence, these are awful!” Newt protests. Credence just shrugs, uncomfortable, because he hadn’t even noticed when it had happened. It was probably one of the new dragonets they were rehabilitating, but it could as easily have happened earlier.

“… You really don’t feel it?” Newt asks, quiet and sad in a way Credence doesn’t really understand. He shrugs again instead of answering, feigning an interest in the mangrove trees they were trying to grow in the newest habitat. Newt cleans and dresses his arm in silence and doesn’t say anything else, and Credence hopes he’s dropped it.

Except:

“What do you want for breakfast, Credence?” Newt asks, as though Credence hasn’t eaten the same thing for breakfast everyday since he came here.

“I don’t mind,” Credence says with a frown, and Newt presents him with hot cocoa and cinnamon pancakes and a shy, hesitant smile. Credence eats it like he would eat anything else and smiles back, awkward and confused, and Newt’s face falls.

“Are you cold?” Newt asks later when they’re taking a break in the Qiqirn’s frozen tundra.

“Not really,” Credence answers honestly.

Newt droops fractionally, but only for a second. “Well, I’m cold,” he says, and with a flick of his wand conjures a pair of ridiculous, yellow-black-yellow knitted blankets, the larger of which he drapes over Credence.

“Is it scratchy?” he asks. “Some people find wool scratchy, I can get you a fleece one if you prefer.”

“It’s fine,” Credence says, but he can tell from the way Newt ducks his head and turns away that it’s not the right answer. He rolls his eyes, because Newt is being ridiculous, and focuses on the feel of the blanket. It’s… “Soft,” he says, almost surprised. “It’s soft.”

Newt beams, and Credence’s breath catches, because  _oh_. He shakes the feeling off, but if it makes Newt happy…

“It’s warm,” he says, the next time Newt fusses about the fire and drags Credence’s chair to sit next to it. And if he concentrates on it, on the fire and the feel of Newt hovering next to him, then yes, it’s warm.

And, “It’s sweet,” the next time Newt makes him cocoa. He tastes it again, sorting through the flavours and trying to remember what they are, and wrinkles his nose. “It’s  _very_  sweet.” The cocoa is levitated out his hands before he can protest and replaced by another one, darker, deeper flavour - “Oh,” he says. “It tastes like oranges.”

“You like it?” Newt asks, leaning forward until his chair is at risk of over balancing. Credence rolls the taste over his tongue and decides, yes. Yes, he likes oranges, and he likes the way Newt laughs in delight when he tells him.

And, “You smell nice,” he mumbles, sleepy and not aware it. He’s curled up on the sofa under his yellow-black-yellow blanket (it’s soft) and he’s got a fever. It’s uncomfortable, his throat is scratchy, everything’s too hot and too cold and any other time he’d fade away into smoke and wait for it to go away - but Newt put his hand against his forehead to check his temperature, and fussed over straightening pillows, and make him chicken soup. Now, Newt freezes where he’s leaning over Credence to tuck the blanket tighter around him, but Credence slips into sleep and doesn’t notice.

And, later, when the fever is gone and the dragonets are released and Credence and Newt stand on a ridge in the middle of the mountains and watch them wheel away into the sky, “Do you want a hug?”

Newt looks over at him, windswept and wide eyed. “I’m sorry?” he asks, and Credence can’t read the tone of his voice. He fiddles with the cuffs of his jacket and feigns an interest in the rock formations.

“You’re sad,” he explains. “And I thought -”

Newt hugs him.

Newt hugs him, and it’s  _warm soft sweet smells nice_ and Credence buries one hand in Newt’s hair and holds the other around his back to pull him close, and he can feel Newt’s heartbeat against his chest and the curve of Newt’s cheek where he’s smiling, and Credence feels like he can’t breath because  _oh_.

Oh.

When he kisses him, he learns that Newt tastes like oranges, and he thinks maybe he likes having a corporeal form after all. Being an obscurus still means freedom but being human means Newt, and now when Credence flows into arms and smiles it feels like coming home.


End file.
